The Congressional Budget Office this week released a report analyzing various budget scenarios for carrying out the Vision for Space Exploration. This report was prepared as directed by the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (section 410), which required the CBO to update its 2004 analysis of the projected costs of implementing the VSE.

While members of Florida’s Congressional delegation push to keep the space shuttle flying after 2010, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) remains on the side of Constellation, particularly the Ares 1. He told the Huntsville Times that NASA couldn’t afford flying the shuttle after 2010 while also supporting Ares and the ISS. “With only so much resources […]

While the White House may not have settled on its pick to be NASA administrator, a libertarian group is prepared if, by some freakish turn of events, it came to power. The group announced today that its pick to “run” NASA would be Jim Davidson. Read on for why “run” is in quotes:

The journal Science wasn’t the only publication new presidential science advisor John Holdren talked with this week when he discussed issues like the future of the shuttle and cooperation with China. In an interview with Nature, Holdren addresses that comment by President Obama regarding the “sense of drift” at NASA:

Yesterday the Houston Chronicle wrote the obituary for Nick Lampson’s prospects to become NASA administrator, after Lampson himself appeared to tell the paper that the White House had not offered the job to him and that he was “moving on with my life”. Wait, not so fast, says the Orlando Sentinel in a mid-day blog […]

We don’t have a NASA administrator yet, but we do have a presidential science advisor, in the form of John Holdren, who formally started work last month after a nomination hearing in February. In an interview today with the journal Science, Holdren addressed (among many other things) space policy issues.

Former congressman Nick Lampson tells the Houston Chronicle in today’s edition that he is not a candidate for the NASA administrator job. Lampson said he has not undergone the background checks and other vetting that would correspond with being a candidate for the job. And about those reports he had met with White House Chief […]

The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach, who wrote the article expressing Sen. Bill Nelson’s frustration at the lack of a NASA administrator, blogged today about another potential candidate: Congressman Bart Gordon, chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee. Achenbach said he asked Gordon about the job and that Gordon “said he already has the best […]

While some people are lobbying to extend the life of the space shuttle, others are using NASA’s current uncertainty to press for radial changes to Constellation, up to and including cancellation. The latest effort along those lines is the Space Frontier Foundation’s “Mind the Space Gap” campaign, discussed by Foundation co-founder Jim Muncy during the […]

It’s been clear for some time that there are a few members of Congress, like Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL), who would like to see the shuttle’s life extended beyond 2010 in order to minimize, or at least delay, the economic fallout that could hit the state’s Space Coast region once the shuttle program shuts down. […]